By John Helmer, Moscow In the year since we last wished you well, Dear Reader, you have read on average three of our new stories every working week. Also, you’ve spent an average of more than thirty minutes reading each story.

By John Helmer, Moscow The Central Bank of Russia has called for state prosecutors in Moscow to investigate its most costly bank takeover and bailout, the three-year refinancing and reorganization of National Bank Trust and Otkritie Bank, on suspicion of multibillion-dollar fraud by Vadim Belyaev, the former chief executive and leading shareholder of Otkritie. In […]

By John Helmer, Moscow A man who hates the subject of his writings is as pitiable as a coprophagic with haemorrhoids. The more he consumes of what he desires, the more painful he knows will be the consequence. Termites and rabbits do plenty of the former, but Mother Nature has relieved them of the latter. […]

By John Helmer, Moscow This isn’t news: President Vladimir Putin (lead image, right) is running for re-election on March 18. According to the latest national polls, he is likely to win with a larger majority of a smaller turnout than in 2012. As Tiny Tim (left) almost said in Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, God bless […]

By John Helmer, Moscow Russia’s leading state banker German Gref (lead image, left) and members of the Russian intelligentsia have written to the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, announcing their judgement that Suleiman Kerimov (centre) is innocent of the indictment the French prosecutor has filed in Nice. This charges Kerimov with laundering more than […]

By John Helmer, Moscow Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th century German soldier and military strategist, famously remarked that war is the continuation of policy (politics) by other means. By war, von Clausewitz meant the old-fashioned idea of running people through or making them run away, so they give up their territory, treasure, and women. By […]

By John Helmer, Moscow Extracting guilty pleas from the innocent was the specialty of the Spanish Inquisition and its Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada (lead image, centre). Extracting guilty pleas from the dead is the specialty of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (right), and Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov (left), head of the Church commission investigating […]